Anonymous said…

Referring to above comment: You are not interesting in ill behaviour. You ‘know’ that they do not have time and resources for sectioning people of ‘ill’ behaviour. They throw out of the work when people have ill behaviour. They section when somebody complains to them for his own illness or when they recognise somebody of dangerous or self harming if they encounter to such situation. You are not interested to ‘ill’ behaviour. You are interested to that Thing. The Thing gives you the opportunity to persecute. Now, I am gradually putting the lamp jinni in the lamp. When I own it I gradually own you in the same gradual way that I put it in the lamp. That Thing is very interesting thing. It is like an animal. It is amazing. It is amazing. I am not amazing. You should study it. Never, you can publish or say anything about your local psychiatry ward. But one day people will know like other things. You should control yourself. You should ‘know’ Satin shows the way to hidden world even the hidden world of your local psychiatry ward and sectioning and criminal record and ill harmless behaviour and persecution and prosecution and prisons. This bulletin board has helped me much to put it in the lamp.
Be ready.
Cyrus

11:06 AM

Anonymous said…

Now I elaborate on the comment "antisocial when ill." this means alternatively "when ill then antisocial." Therefore, let him have a criminal record as well. The writer of this comment, it seems that does not understand what is anti-psychiatry or critical psychiatry.
Two street upper than the block that I live there is a playground for toddlers. What type of toddlers? Toddlers who sell alcohols and cigarettes to under sixteen. toddlers who sit there and smoke cannabis toddlers who become violent when neighbouring people ask them to leave that place. It is two years that they write to council and police and ask them to demolish the place and do something especially at weekend nights to prevent these type of people go there. But police have not time. During two years once police have checked the area at 11 o’clock in the morning on a weekday and has found nothing. Police have told the people they should go and talk personally with annoying people because during the weekend police have not time. I read this in my local newspaper. This for antisocial and criminal record.
The police who came from neighbouring city and arrested me while I was caring my minor child at the busiest time of the week -Friday night. is in charge of policing of a city where in its town centre people draw gun, stab, push the passerby’s to ATM machines with knife. They closed the town centre pub because they had not enough force to secure the town centre. Every month a bi8g gang of armed drug dealers become arrested there. Now, what on the world a fifty five year old disabled retired teacher with wife and child could have done against the social of this area that police should leave its other tasks and come and punish him, perhaps the idiot abuser abusive who has raped the honour of my family and mine only god knows. Are you listening to me? I win. I win. Those who sold me to Satin have not sleep now. You read the newspaper, Don’t you? I win the way that makes me happy. You are gradually betraying yourselves. Your computer address is different with mine. These people can check.
But meanwhile I prayed and kept them busy the very next day for a long time.
Jesus Christ

10:17 PM

Anonymous said…

Monk goes to Asylum
LOGLINE:
After being discovered in Trudy’s old house, Monk is temporarily institutionalised. Once committed, he stumbles upon a decades-old murder. Or is his mind playing tricks on him?
SYNOPSIS:
A confused Monk is found trespassing in the home of his late wife, Trudy, and is sent to the Medford Psychiatric Institute for two days of observation. The hospital, like Monk’s scarred psyche, is currently under renovation. Monk meets the hospital’s brilliant director, Dr. Morris Lancaster, as well as fellow patients John Wurster – an overly empathic, Zelig-type ("I’m a detective too!") – and Manny, a man in his thirties who still believes in Santa Claus.
Wurster tells Monk about a murder that took place at Medford four years earlier. A patient named Bill LeFrankie shot and killed Dr. Conrad Gould in the medical supply room, then stole barbiturates and died nearby of a fatal overdose. However, the gun used in the murder was never found, and Wurster confides to his "colleague" Monk that he never believed the official story. At first, Monk pays little heed to Wurster’s theory.
In group therapy, Manny reports looking out his window and seeing Santa Claus hovering over the chimney the night before. Intrigued, Monk later finds what appears to be a swatch of torn red cloth dangling from the chimney. Monk soon begins to suspect a possible connection between what Manny saw on the roof and Dr. Gould’s murder. Using a newspaper clipping of the murder scene, Monk re-enacts the Gould slaying, and deduces that the killer most likely wasn’t a patient, but a hospital staff member. Monk begins to suspect Dr. Lancaster.
Lancaster reacts by sabotaging Monk’s investigation, manufacturing evidence to "prove" Monk is crazy. He says, “Monk has delusion, has mood swing, he is bipolar.” His efforts are so successful, even Monk starts to believe he is wrong – until Sharona uncovers evidence that supports Monk’s theory. Monk resumes his investigation.
Lancaster lawfully search pockets of patients in their absence, put things in their pockets, destroys evidence. He does whatever he can for the sake of health and control
The fact that the fishing line is missing from a fishing rod in the director’s office soon completes the picture for Monk: Gould was up for the hospital directorship, Lancaster wanted the job, and he shot Gould to get it. Next, he framed a patient for the murder, and then dropped the murder weapon down an unused chimney. Now, four years later, renovation is threatening to expose the gun, so Lancaster arranged to have Manny, the Santa Claus nut, moved into a bedroom that overlooks the chimney. Lancaster then returned to the roof in a Santa Claus outfit so he could literally "go fishing" for the murder weapon, knowing Manny‘s reports about Santa being on the roof would be dismissed as lunacy.
Monk confronts "Santa", a.k.a. Lancaster, on the rooftop – just as Lancaster successfully recovers the handgun and points it at Monk’s head. However, Sharona and the police arrive in time, and Lancaster is led away in handcuffs, leaving Monk to comment ruefully that, "You accused Manny of hallucination, You wanted to kill Manny, Except for the murders and him trying to kill me, he was the best doctor I ever had."
Manny Antisocial

6:14 PM

Anonymous said…

Picture Movie The Collector
You won’t dare open your mouth, but you’ll be screaming for her to escape!
A man kidnaps a woman and holds her hostage just for the pleasure of having her there.
A game of cat and mouse ensues and over the course of the erupting minutes, one is never quite sure what will or will not happen. Will she escape or will evil prevail?
“I suppose it was the loneliness and being far away from anything else that made me decide to buy the house. And after I did I told myself I’d never go through with the plan, even though I’d made all the preparations and knew where she was every minute of the day.”
Freddie, a socially withdrawn bank clerk and butterfly collector, decides to expand to collecting human specimens. That’s where art student Miranda Grey comes in. Miranda matches wits with Freddie the icy sociopath. Freddie is an inept bank clerk with no future. His only hobby is collecting butterflies, which gives him a feeling of power and control that is otherwise totally missing from his life. He comes into a large sum of money, and buys himself a country house. Still unable to make himself at ease socially, he starts to plan on acquiring a girl friend – in the same manner as he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house to be a collecting jar, and stalks his victim over several days.
Miranda Grey: I’ve stayed the four weeks.
Freddie Clegg: I just have to have you here a little longer.
Miranda Grey: Why? What more can I do? What more can you want?
Freddie Clegg: You know what I want… it’s what I’ve always wanted. You could fall in love with me if you tried. I’ve done everything I could to make it easy. You just won’t try!
He is that most capable of monsters who needs no makeup or agents from the supernatural world to make his mark, but rather the corrupt nature of a beast that blends so well into the woodwork as to be unseen to the naked eye.
Upon winning a sweepstakes prize, Freddie Clegg, an inconspicuous and deeply troubled young man, spends his time capturing and cataloguing butterflies. Meeting lovely art student Miranda Grey, he has now found another creature he wishes to possess. Exercising socio-pathical patience, Freddie manages to bag his prey using a handkerchief soaked in chloroform. He brings Miranda to his isolated farmhouse and holds her prisoner, all the while trying to convince her to love him. Miranda Grey ‘s liberated woman, open about sex and knowledgeable about art, frustrates Freddie Clegg repressed captor, adding further tension to the situation.
In the film, Miranda Grey has a profound affection for THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and Salvador Dali, things that Freddie Clegg does not understand. Miranda has little hope of ever enjoying her freedom again but she’ll do everything she can to get out alive.
She morphs from a carefree, young art student to a woman caught in a web of deceit, sexual outbursts and insanity. She has become the latest ‘catch’ for Clegg, the crown jewel of his collection. Miranda has only one way out — to learn to love Clegg by being his ‘guest’. Will she? It will become a battle of survival of the fittest.
The book took the form of a diary as written by Miranda after her capture and betrayed all of the emotions, gambits and tragedies that befell the twosome.
Freddie could not understand what was wrong with detaining the girl. Well, she had everything in detention.
Freddie believed that the death of the girl was due to her own fault. He wanted to restrain her but she resisted and received injury.
Freddie was a sociopath.
Manny Antisocial

9:01 PM

Anonymous said…

Nutty, do you not give an answer to for The Collector Movie? You can use sentences from that comment

10:05 PM

Carlo DJ said…

Dear Professor Barker,
I am very sad that you decided not to pop in this Blog. Your soothing presence was extremely helpful for me to create a narrative of my experience that in turn I believe might be helpful for other people with my experience. I had not any idea about your life and career until yesterday that I visited the Tidal Model website. I found very common points in your biography with mine. I knew you only from your paper appeared in the article section of this website. For the reasons (explained by T Sceff and also one of the articles in this website) that are related to my misery that is being cut for sixteen years from any friendship or conversing party I never assume that Dr Double or you or anybody might have read what I am writing and I have dubbed as Grand Unified Theory. I also did not assume any reaction or response. We know from Aristotle that one type of rhetoric is that the orator talks without arguing with the audience. And audience are allowed to leave if they like. I believe an unidentified agency related to coercive and traditional psychiatry is persecuting me without informing my wife or me. That idea brought to my mind that I should leave my side of the story for knowledge of future people in a safe corner.
Happily, that agency at last made a mistake to come here and assert itself with anonymous label.
I have reasons that keep myself anonymous. But, I believe, correct and lawful people do not hide themselves in the darkness. But a criminal makes a mistake at last and adventures to come to daylight. I noticed that the ‘NuttySurvivor’ at last became rude and started to become abusive toward you. I understood that he wants to cover himself under my anonymous name and create an episode of madness (similar to Manny in the Adrian Monk Story) that might smear my attempts to talk in this website. I suppose there is a way to differentiate its IP address from mine. I do not have money to subscribe to an anonymous hub. Also its language in those few comments is correct language of a native speaker, which is different from my distorted language.
It is not compulsory for Bloggers to follow a thread. Internet is an angle based on the intrinsic feeling of human beings. In the same way that our minds are connected globally together in the background texture of the universe we have modelled these humble assistances of our memories to be connected together to share our experiences. If you go to thousands and thousands of Blogs some are related to alien worlds civilisations, some to fitness, some to politics some to inventions and here people who are interested to anti-psychiatry or critical psychiatry or whatever. In all of them sooner or later a pathologic bully will come and intervene. All of us know that we should ignore him. If I want to analyse the content of the bully speech who has come here it takes one year and then you will appreciate I do not need Wittgenstein or Chomsky to acknowledge my findings. I experience what they want to scientifically explain. But when I find affirmation in theories of their lifetime work I become very fulfilled. Perhaps, if they become aware, they also become fulfilled. That language is an extreme instant of the language for mental suffering of the opponents, and it is likely that it has been created after the end of matriarchy. Its mild instances are used in politics when two parties are in full war and hostility with each other. I want you to emphasis its magnitude. Who can create that language? Perhaps one day we can discover. The voice that became silence after the story of Adrian Monk and the story of The Collector might give us a clue. I believe it escaped.
In any way we decided to comeback, but in our own thread. But in this thread we might come and analyse those comments.
We are using the Internet Blog as a novel, cheap and exciting way of psychoanalysis without spending time and money for an expert analyst. By the way analysts might by some chance come and read it, as I mentioned in Rudyard Kipling poem. You see I hear voices on the Internet in my local computer from a global mind. It is the Internet ‘schizophrenia’. I try to prove that it is not mine. I also imitate a divided Internet personality.
To reduce the cruel demonic voices I hear on the Internet, I use a random generator of password that logs me without informing me of the password, but perhaps ‘they’ can decipher it. I do not know if such a capability exists for the government-supported intruders or not. I try to clear-cut myself from my enemy.
Best wishes
Carlo DJ

1:28 PM

Anonymous said…

Above comment: What are you? Are you psychiatrist? Are you a psychiatry user? Are you a survivor? You are talking very intelligent? As you said (you can publish your psychiatry ward and it changes to better) OR (you never publish and it changes to worse). If you wait, how old are you, after fifty years everything would change for you. I do not know. You should decide for what side you are talking. I DID NOT READ YOUR COMMENT. SO YOU ALSO CAN IGNOR MINE. I ONLY NOTICED YOUR NAME. YOU SHOULD DECIDE WHICH SIDE YOU ARE DEFENDING. LATER we analyse your previous comments. Blog means this. You say something and people say something else. You should not think too much. I bring you to SUNshine. Go and read more about Grand Unified Theory. From your previous comments I understand you do not have a psychiatry problem. You should go to political websites and Blogs, but what you have left here is of some value for us. I copy your last comment and keep it for future analysis, because you are great. you are magnificent. You should become president of the Star Trek and whole galaxi. You should go to political sites and offer your bright ideas for international peace and FREEDOM to THEM. I assure you I DID NOT READ YOUR LAST COMMENT BECAUSE OF MY RESPECT FOR YOUR CONFIDENTIALITY.

10:10 PM

Anonymous said…

Comment related ONLY to Nutty Survivor: I believe you are a very masculine handsome gentleman. But unfortunately I do not have your name and address. Will you please leave them for me. I am a bored housewife. Nutty Nutty.

10:35 PM

Carlo DJ said…

Dear Nutty Survivor you are sending so many spam. Nobody reads those spam. You do not have energy to write something. Anything is useful and helpful. Just anything.

8:58 PM

This thread was started to allow a "fresh" start for this blog. Anyone like to start …

11:08 PM

Jim Crichton said…

I’ll kick off.
In the sixties and seventies I was very much influenced by existential psychiatry and, naively, thought that the future lay in these ideas. Organic psychiatry has not only retained its grip but has strengthened its power since that time.
Society believes in the lie that psychotropic medication is precise, specific and effective and is willing to support coercion and incarceration as treatment because of this belief.
Much of the critical psychiatry debate in the past has been centred on the locus, focus and technology of psychiatry. (Miller and Rose)
My opinion is that the only way forward is to insist that psychiatry has to be continually subject to an analytical and critical framework with human rights and civil liberties at it’s core.
People who have the misfortune to be diagnosed as mentally ill cannot continue to have inferior rights to the rest of society.

5:32 PM

jim crichton said…

I did post to the previous thread but was deterred from making any other contributions because the blog became a vehicle for the design of some grand theory. I do not feel that I am able to contribute to such a theory so I welcome this new thread and I hope that others will take the opportunity to add their views.
What I want to present with this post is the opinion that we should campaign for the end of all forms of detention in psychiatry. In a technologically advanced democratic society, detention should be the monopoly of the criminal justice system and every citizen of the state should be provided with equal rights under the law. Detention has no place in medicine and its continued widespread use is a mark of psychiatry’s failure to provide effective forms of treatment.

11:04 AM

NuttySurvivor said…

Dare I suggest that this isn’t really a blog. It’s effectively a bulletin board, but it’s not advertised as such, therefore you may not get people coming here who would use it that way.
In essence, a blog is a sort of journal. You might post an entry that goes something like "I had an exchange of emails with Prof X about how his model of nursing fits in with my model of psychiatry and….
Later I saw a client who… and I got to wondering how my earlier conversation impacted on this…" You then invite comments, and thus you give the conversation some thrust.

9:11 PM

NuttySurvivor said…

The question then is what you do with those who are a danger to themselves or others; or who behave in an antisocial manner when ill. Is a criminal record better than a history of having been sectioned? Having experienced the violence and degradation of my local psychiatric ward, I think I’d rather be in prison; but I’d rather have been sectioned than prosecuted.

8:08 PM

Nutty said…

"Never, you can publish or say anything about your local psychiatry ward. "
I can, and do, say things about my local psychiatric ward. It’s the only way to change things for the better, and it works.

8:58 PM

Anonymous said…

I find the notion that toddlers can smoke and trade in cannabis or other drugs absurd. You do nothing to enhance your arguments by saying such things. Find me a toddler who can even count high enough to work out how much money to charge anyone, or one with sufficient manual dexterity to hold a cigarette long enough to smoke it without physical assistance. And how much harm can an angry toddler do? Not a lot at that age. An older child, maybe, but not a toddler.

2:50 PM

Phil B. said…

Apologies for changing the subject (!) but I have just finished reading the very interesting book by Bracken and Thomas (Postpsychiatry) in which they refer to "the increasing number of psychiatrists participating in the Critical Psychiatry Network (CPN)".
I know that we owe this blog and the site to Duncan Double but have ANY psychiatrists (apart from Duncan) ever participated in any open discourse on this site? Or is there some other, ‘private members club’ for Critical Psychiatry on which I have not yet gained membership?
Phil B

7:36 PM

Nutty said…

You could start one. Surely with your reputation, you could draw in some serious contributors?

6:38 PM

Anonymous said…

If I was inclined, I might be inclined towards cynicism. This website, which purports to represent a radical, paradigm-shifting psychiatric nexus, seems little more than a ghost. I am confident that Duncan Double hovers somewhere in the background but all the ‘names’ listed as representing ‘Critical Psychiatry in Action’ seem to resist taking action beyond ‘signing up’ to the site. As a live event, the ‘chatline’ is drenched with irony and raving discontent, none of which represents what I assumed ‘critical psychiatry’ to represent; and this ‘blog’ (however alternative) has been overtaken by arcane philosophers (?) who write like some Peter Sellers spoof-character, or maybe I am thicker than I think. Whatever, as the young people say.
The net result is that, despite its proud assertion, this site still has to declare itself as genuinely ‘critical psychiatry’. Yes, some intersting paper and links, but these could be found in any published medium. If this is to be an ‘internet site’ then the ‘big names’ who purport to support it, or indeed ARE Critical Psychiatry, must put aside their port glasses of an evening and actually commit themselves to communicating their ‘critique’ via the net. Otherwise, we can all go back to writing/reading books.
Phil B
The College Dublin

6:47 PM

NuttySurvivor said…

"I noticed that the ‘NuttySurvivor’ at last became rude and started to become abusive toward you."
I do not accept that I have said anything rude or aggressive. On the contrary, I acknowledged Prof Barker’s eminent status and warmly suggested that he start his own blog. I should be very surprised if it were not popular if he did. There are few people in the mental health field with the positive reputation amongst both mental health professionals and service users that Prof Barker has.

7:46 PM

NuttySurvivor said…

"Dear Nutty Survivor you are sending so many spam. Nobody reads those spams. You do not have energy to write something. Anything is useful and helpful. Just anything." (Peter Jones)
I have not sent any spam. Perhaps you would clarify which of my postings you regard as spam.

8:49 PM

kitkatsavvy said…

If you are after a cool picture of the DSM IV book being burnt (I used photoshop), then have a look at the picture at this link >>.
http://www.psychopanic.com/images/dsmbook.gif

4:14 AM

Comment deleted

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

8:00 PM

Smoke said…

Drugs are just bad, you should try to use Herbal Alternatives as a temporary replacement to loose the dependance!

1:46 PM

Guitar Master said…

I wish I could blog as good as you, but what I can do is give you a nice Guitar Lesson

7:02 AM

Anonymous said…

Re: Above comment: enjoy yourself!
Wolfgang Strauss

10:46 PM

Anonymous said…

Stop spamming MH boards you cunt.

9:35 AM

wonderfullynutty said…

Stop abusing my name nutty survivor, you damn psychiatry yet work for NIMHE . That’s a criticism of you as well Duncan. You are being happily paid to do something you claim to loath. Get rid of the day job dude or shut the fuck up.

9:43 AM

Simon S said…

Thought you might be interested in this link about bipolar disorder and ADHD http://www.psycheducation.org/depression/SoboOnKids.htm

6:12 AM

So, Duncan, who are you hoping will ‘blog’? (I have to confess that I don’t know, exactly, what this cyber-term means, and haven’t taken the trouble to look it up, but I suspect it is some kind of conversation).
I think your site is – in a many different ways – a brave and bold step in a positive direction but, with all due respect, it hasn’t followed through. I watched the boxers Audley Harrison and Danny Williams trying to avouid hitting one another at the weekend. Sure, they both ‘talked’ a good fight in advance but didn’t really ‘follow through’. It kinda reminded me of this, and other ‘critical’ or ‘psychminded’ sites. Some people want to be indentified as ‘critical-minded’ or even ‘post-psychiatric’, but are not at all keen to talk about this, in any open, ordinary sense. Maybe this would involve them ‘dropping their guard’, ‘exposing themselves’ or otherwise, risking ‘being flattened’. Whatever the rationale, it makes for pretty dull proceedings.
In this special context, this seems strangely ironic, given the public misconception that psychiatry is all about ‘communication’. So why don’t all the assorted, concerned, not to mention ‘radical’ minds talk to one another? Just begging the question.
I guess the more direct question is, where are, all the august ‘names’ that grace the significant positions of the Critical Psychiatry Network, not to mention the assorted ‘other contacts’? It would be nice to hear what lies behind the name.
Yours in Friendship
Phil B

6:53 PM

Duncan Said …

I’m sorry that Phil does not find the Critical Psychiatry Network radical enough. Personally I have gone public about my suspension from my Trust. Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas have a book on post-psychiatry coming out at the end of this year and my edited book on Critical Psychiatry is due out next spring. How else do you want us to follow through?
We are here! Sorry if we seem a bit dull. We are very happy to engage with you or anyone else. As you know I have posted your What chance post-psychiatry? on my Critical psychiatry site.

5:08 PM

Phil B. said…

Hi Duncan
Is it my turn to say ‘sorry’ for bvegging some questions/ I do find the Critical Psychiatry site radical enough, I was only wondering, in the context of your original query as to “what no users os this blog”, where were all the ‘big names’ – I acknowledge that they may be writing books etc, but this was blog-talk.
Yes, thanks for publishing our piece on ‘What chance post-psychiatry”. But, what is the point of writing/publishing such stuff if there is no discourse – which is where we came in with “where are all the bloggers?”
The story about your ‘suspension’ makes for sobering reading – all the more sobering when I realise that I was unaware of this (not a regular reader of the BMJ) and, more importantly, that people have not been shouting baout this from the CP rooftops.
Keep on keeping on Duncan – i do like your site very much indeed.
Yours in Friendship
Phil B.

6:25 PM

I have recently retired after 36 years as a psychiatric nurse and now is the time to look back over the years in order to contrast the past with the present and, possibly,use these observations to speculate what the future might bring.
In 1969, nursing care in acute psychiatric wards was based on the philosophy of the 3Cs and the most prominent therapy was the 3T therapy.
The 3Cs were -containment, constraint and coercion.
3T therapy consisted of tea, tobacco and television and was pretty much self administered because the qualified nursing staff were kept busy drinking coffee and gossiping in the staff room.
Most nurse patient interaction took place at meal times and drug rounds plus extemporaneous occasions when nurses would force patients to the floor and inject them with drugs against their will. I believe that the business community hijacked this last technique in the 1980s for use in their team building exercises.
How things have changed.
Patients now have a greater choice of television channels for their therapy and some wards actually provide video recorders.
The quality of staff coffee has improved dramatically but, it is a tribute to the resilience and flexibility of staff that many will accept a colombian cafetierre brew if kenyan filter is not available.
The 3Cs have demonstrated their longevity and still provide the backbone of what is described in the profession as ‘care’.
The serious message behind this commentary is that society would never accept such stagnation and inability to deliver results from any other branch of medicine but it does so with psychiatry.

4:59 PM

Boat charter said…

Es

9:58 PM

Phil B. said…

Is it just me or are others reading this wishing that ‘anonymous’ – who is obviously more than one person – would identify themselves, if only in code? I appreciate the line taken by one ‘anonymous’ writer, regarding “salmon” and the ocean. Put simply – context is all. I am sure that people who move – from the dangerous waters of madness, especially with the attendant miseries of unhelpful, detaining, containing psychiatrists and nurses and ‘therapising’ psychologists etc – to the calmer waters of compassion and genuine caring, do ‘feel’ different beings. I am no rocket scientist but this seems obvious.
Thank you for this ‘salmon’ metaphor, whoever you are.
Phil B.

Professor
The College Dublin, Ireland

7:40 PM

Phil B. said…

Duncan originally said: “Could people please tell me if they have problems posting on this blog”
Well there appears to be no problem for two folks (only one of whom will own up to a name) blogging one another endlessly and obscurely. Maybe you should do the decent thing, Duncan, and give themselves a blog of their own, where they can blog one another to infinity.

6:48 PM

Simon Sobo said…

Those interested in a number of articles that are critical of psychiatry might begin with this article “A Re-evaluation of the Relationship
between Psychiatric Diagnosis and
Chemical Imbalances” http://www.geocities.com/ss06470/index.htm or this “On the Banality of Positive Thinking” http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p010701c.html or “ADHD and Other Sins of our Children” http://simonsobo.blogspot.com/2005/04/adhd-and-other-sins-of-our-children.html
Good luck with this topic

10:45 AM

What – no users of this blog?

6:45 PM

Duncan said

Could people please tell me if they have problems posting on this blog.

5:33 PM

Carlo Di Juliani said

Months went by when Julian saw no one. Often he would close his eyes and try to recapture his youth in memory. The courtyard of the castle would appear before him, with grey hounds on the steps, pages in the armoury, and a fair-haired boy under a vine-covered arbour, between an old man wrapped in furs and a lady with a great coif. And suddenly the two corpses were there. He would throw himself flat on his bed, weeping and crying ‘ Ah, poor father! Poor mother, poor mother!’ and he would fall into a fitful slumber in which these funereal visions continued to haunt him.
One night, while he was asleep, he thought he heard someone calling him. He strained his ears, but could make out nothing but the roar of the waves.
But again the same voice called out:
‘Julian!’
It came from the far bank, and this struck him as extraordinary, considering the width of the river.
A third time the summons came:
‘Julian!’
And this penetrating voice had the sound of a church-bell.
Lighting his lantern, Julian left the hut. A raging tempest was blowing through the night. The darkness was profound, broken only here and there by the whiteness of the leaping waves.
After a moment’s hesitation Julian cast off the painter. At once the water became calm, and the boat glided across it to the other bank, where a man was waiting.
He was wrapped in a ragged cloth, his face like a plaster mask and his two eyes redder than burning coals. Holding the lantern up to him, Julian saw that he was covered with a hideous leprosy, and yet there was something kingly in his bearing.
As soon as he got into the boat, it went a long way down in the water, under the weight of his body; then it rose again with a jolt, and Julian starts rowing.
At every stroke the surf lifted the bows up in the air. The water, looking blacker than ink, streamed furiously past on either side. It hollowed out abysses and built up mountains, and the boat leapt up before sinking again into the depths, where it spun round, tossed by the wind.
Julian bent his body, stretched his arms out, and arched himself backwards from his feet to get more power. The hail lashed his hands, the rain ran down his back, the violence of the wind took his breath away, and at last he stopped. The boat then began drifting away downstream. But realizing that this was a matter of the first importance, a trust he must on no account desert, he took up his oars again, and the rattle of the rowlocks cut through the clamour of the storm.
The little lantern was shining in front of him. Birds fluttering past it hid it from time to time. But all the while he could see the eyes of the Leper, who stood in the stern of the boat, motionless as a pillar. And this went on for a long, long time.
When they reached the hut, Julian shut the door and saw the Leper sitting on the stool. The shroud-like garment which covered him had slipped down to his hips, and shoulders, his chest, and his scrawny arms were hidden under patches of scaly pustules. His brow was furrowed with enormous wrinkles. Like a skeleton he had a hole where the nose should have been, and from his bluish lips came a nauseous breath as thick as a fog.
‘I am hungry,’ he said.
Julian gave him what he had: an old gammon of bacon and the crust from a loaf of black bread.
When he had finished eating, the table, the bowl, and the handle of the knife bore the same marks that could be seen on his body.
Next he said: ‘I am thirsty.’
Julian went to get his pitcher, and as he picked it up, there arose from it a scent which made his heart and nostrils expand. It was wine. What a wonderful find this was, he thought. But the Leper stretched out his hand and emptied the whole pitcher at one draught.
Then he said: ‘I am cold.’
With his candle Julian set light to a bundle of bracken in the middle of the hut.
The Leper came near to warm himself. Squatting on his heels, he began trembling all over. His strength was flagging, his eyes had stopped shining, his sores were running, and in an almost inaudible voice he murmured: ‘Your bed!’
Julian tenderly helped him to drag himself to it, even spreading the sail of his boat over him to cover him.
The Leper lay there groaning. His teeth showed at the corners of his mouth, his chest heaved as his dying breath came more and more quickly, and at every gasp his belly was sucked in as far as his backbone.
Then he closed his eyes.
‘My bones are like ice. Come here beside me!’
And Julian, lifting the sail, lay down side by side with him on the dead leaves.
The Leper turned his head.
‘Take off your clothes so that I may feel the warmth of your body!’
Julian stripped, and then, naked as on the day he was born, he lay down on the bed again. And against his thigh he felt the Leper’s skin, colder than a snake and as rough as a file.
He spoke encouragingly to him, and the other gasped out in reply:
‘Ah, I am dying! Come closer and warm me! No not with your hands, with your whole body!’
Julian stretched himself out on top of him, mouth to mouth, breast to breast.
Then the Leper clasped him in his arms. And all at once his eyes took on the brightness of the stars, his hair spread out like the rays of the sun, and the breath of his nostrils had the sweetness of roses. A cloud of incense rose from the hearth and the waves outside began to sing.
Meanwhile an abundance of delight, a superhuman joy swept like a flood into Julian’s soul as he lay there in a swoon. And the one whose arms still held him tight grew and grew, until his head and his feet touched the walls of the hut. The roof flew off, the heavens unfolded – and Julian rose towards the blue, face to face with Our Lord Jesus Christ, who bore him up to Heaven.
And that is the story of St Julian Hospitator, more or less as it is depicted on a stained glass window in a church in my part of the world.
By: G. Flaubert
From : Three Tales, Penguin Classics 1977

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